Permanent
by madame.alexandra
Summary: Han thought he knew every inch of Leia, but when he gets back from Jabba's palace, he notices something different. Set after ROTJ, before Endor.
_a/n: not much to say._

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 ** _Permanent_**

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She decided he must have taken it upon himself to leave no speck of her skin untouched or unkissed. In the half-lucid lull that settled over her following his much more overt sexual affection, she found herself nearly hypnotized by the rhythm of his attention: she was falling asleep to the soothing pattern of his fingertips brushing over her bare skin, followed seconds later by his lips.

She reveled in his touch; having him back was all she'd wanted for the past year, and to finally achieve that left her feeling triumphant and reckless – reckless enough not to care when she told the leadership she didn't need a bunk at the rendezvous point; she'd be staying on the _Falcon_.

The look on Mon Mothma's face had been one of supreme suspicion and disapproval, but she didn't care, _couldn't_ care. If Mon Mothma had thought it was merely friendship that sparked the leave Leia had taken to rescue Han, then the old bat was delusional.

Leia sighed quietly. Her eyes were heavy, and for the first time since Cloud City she didn't shy from sleep – she didn't dread it; she anticipated one of those deep, satisfying slumbers she'd always enjoyed when she was with him.

"Leia," he mumbled suddenly, abruptly lifting his head.

His fingers pressed into the flesh above her hip with interest, and she shifted her head, her lashes fluttering.

"What is this?" he asked.

She parted her lips and, without opening her eyes, answered:

"It's from the metal," she murmured. "Hot metal, Tatooine sun – sun rash," she answered.

He shook his head, though she didn't see it.

"No, not the rash," he corrected, clearing his throat. His fingers pressed insistently into her skin, just near the curve of her hipbone. " _This_."

He was level with her abdomen, his legs hanging out of the bunk. He ran one hand over her knees and pulled them towards him, looking up, and waiting. He hadn't noticed it earlier – his vision had been recovering even as he pulled her into bed with him – but even so, it was new; it hadn't been there before he went into carbonite.

She opened her eyes, and turned her head to look.

His fingers were splayed near a line of elegant black script on her hip, and her heart skipped a few beats – she'd forgotten it was there; forgotten it hadn't _always_ been there.

She swallowed hard and shifted, rolling into her back, pulling her legs from his grasp. He let her go, and ran both hands over the script for a moment, before looking up at her expectantly. He shifted so that his legs were back on the bunk, curled up, feet pressed against the wall behind him.

"That," Leia began demurely, looking for a moment, and then tilting her head back to look up to the top of the bunk, "is a tattoo."

He raised one brow, and nodded.

"Yes it is," he agreed. "I can tell it's a _tattoo_."

"Then why did you ask?"

He gave her a look.

"I was askin' in a more philosophical sense."

Her abdomen tightened under his hand as she laughed.

"Han Solo, philosopher," she teased dramatically. "An expert in seduction of royals, and repairing ships with spit and sheer determination."

"You evading my question, Sweetheart?" he fired back. His fingers went to the tattoo again, and then his smile faded. "Did Jabba do this?"

She shook her head, her mirth fading.

"No, Han," she answered quietly.

The tattoo had almost been visible in the sides of the bikini. The clientele of Jabba's palace would hardly bat an eye at it, but its exposure had made her feel naked – something she'd previously thought only she, and the random artist who had done it, would see had been put on display.

"When did you get this?" he pushed, fascinated.

It wasn't fresh, though the reddened skin around it made it look new. He traced the flowy script with his fingers, narrowing his eyes to decipher it – numbers, he realized; the tattoo was a sequence of numbers, in cursive, with designs in the breaks between them.

Leia turned her head to look down at him. She moved her hand from the bed and rested it in his hair.

"When you were in carbonite," she answered, somewhat obviously.

He looked at her intently for a moment, and then back at the tattoo.

"What's the significance of the numbers?" he asked.

She pursed her lips.

"Look closer," she bid quietly.

The first thing that came to mind was that they must be related to Alderaan somehow – _coordinates._ He read over the writing again, though, and he felt a strange sense of recognition – but he thought he must be imagining it, or he was unsure, at first, if he was thinking in the right direction.

"Are these coordinates?" he asked.

She nodded wordlessly.

His gaze lingered on the tattoo before he looked up and caught her eye again.

"These are Corellia's coordinates," he asserted quietly.

She nodded again, her head falling back on the pillow.

He looked at her for a moment, and then pressed his lips to the tattoo gently before getting up on his hands and knees, crawling back up the bunk, and settling down next to her. Sharing the pillow with her, he stared at her profile until she turned her head to look at him.

"Talk, Princess," he requested gruffly.

She shifted onto her side, turning towards him fully. She slipped both of her hands under her head and pressed them together there, considering him for a contemplative length of silence. She thought carefully about how to proceed, because she suddenly felt that he might think she was out of her mind – that she might scare him off.

"I got it on Hosnian Prime," she said softly. "Lando had lost track of Boba Fett again, and we were trying to decide the best way to proceed – it was right before we thought to infiltrate the palace and wait," she explained.

Her voice was quiet and sleepy; it had a scratchy, warm tenor to it.

"I had a very…intense feeling that I was never going to see you again."

He held her gaze, his hand slipping over her side, and coming to rest on her hip. He ran stroked his thumb over the tattoo, feeling the very subtle difference in skin, the just barely rougher patch where the ink had forced a chemical change.

"So," he drawled. "Her Highness strips down for a stranger and gets a tattoo."

She knew, in the way he said it, that he had no qualms about her stripping down, so to speak, not for so impersonal a reason, and she felt a blush touch her cheeks – because sometimes, when she thought back in it, she thought it was absurd, too. Outwardly, she was supremely modest; the notion of her getting a tattoo in a shop, somewhere that hidden, was difficult for him to imagine.

She took in a steadying breath.

"For a few days, my clothes smelled like you," she said thoughtfully. "My hair," she went on, "still smelled like you," she moved one of her hands and pressed it against his chest, "I had to shower, and then the sheets still smelled like you," she paused, and flicked her eyes up at him a moment, lowering them again in a second, "but after enough months went by, even that faded."

She swallowed, closing her eyes against the memory of how desperately lost she'd felt while he was gone. The hollow place in her stomach, the hole in her heart, they were filled again, but she could still recall the breathtaking hurt that had plagued her.

He seemed to be listening attentively, and he squeezed her hip, arching his brows.

"I still can't see you getting a tattoo," he said.

"I did a lot of things you wouldn't expect when you were in carbonite," she said hoarsely. She ran her hand over to his shoulder and shifted her head, swallowing hard.

"The needle didn't…?" he started, tracing his fingers over the tattoo.

"I had her use the laser," she corrected.

Han couldn't help but feel a small amount of satisfaction that it had been a female tattoo artist. Body art wasn't necessarily sexual, but he still felt a flame of jealousy when he thought of anyone else with his hands near Leia's bare hips.

Han cleared his throat gruffly.

"Why Corellia's coordinates?" he asked, brow furrowing. "Not…not Alderaan's?"

She sighed, shivering slightly. Her hand slid off of them, and she pulled it towards her chest, her fingers curled into a loose fist. It was difficult to explain. She'd gone to the tattoo artist on a whim; she'd been feeling numb, reeling from another failure in the quest to find Han; she'd been desperate to feel something – on the brink of experimenting with something more sinister, synthetic drugs or the like.

She'd been asked what she wanted, and when she'd opened her mouth, that's what had come out – _Corellia's coordinates._

"I suppose," she began carefully. "I needed to feel like you were a part of me," she revealed, "in a way that you'd always be with me," she pushed loose strands of hair back. "I know there are millions of men on Corellia, but it means something to me."

She looked down at the sheets quietly, and then shrugged timidly.

"It's subtle," she murmured. "I wasn't sure how else to connect to you," she paused, "Short of tattooing 'property of Han Solo' on my ass."

He looked at her for a moment, startled, and then he started laughing. He pulled her closer with one arm, and she put her hands on his chest, able to feel his laughter in his skin, reverberating through her veins. His lips brushed her neck, just below her ear, and he splayed is hand over her spine.

"I like the idea of that," he whispered playfully, and she blushed, pressing her forehead against his collarbone.

His hand slipped back to her hip, fascinated, and he kissed her shoulder, looking down her body to the black tattoo again. He looked back up at her thoughtfully.

"Tattoos are pretty permanent," he said. "It's pain to get 'em etched off." He tilted his head, his hand moving from her hip to the back of her thigh. He hitched it over his leg. "What if you regret it?"

She shrugged, and shifted her head, looking up at him through her lashes for a moment, and then widening her eyes, and looking at him fully.

"I won't," she answered. "I decided," she told him simply, "that I won't ever regret you, no matter what happens." She bit her lip delicately for a moment, and then went on: "You made me feel something again, after Alderaan," she whispered. "I'll never forget that."

She held his gaze for a second longer, and then her eyes flicked away, wary of his reaction, anxious even. She was prone to forgetting that however long those months to Bespin had seemed, it was a short time in the grand scheme of things, and he'd been taken away from her so soon after. She was out of her mind to think he wanted the rest of his life with her as badly as she wanted to be with him; she was a foolish young girl –

"Okay," he mumbled against her shoulder, quite suddenly back to kissing every inch of her, "so, does that mean I get Alderaan's coordinates?"

She lay still for a moment with his lips on her, and she closed her eyes, feeling the weight of his words, taking a moment to understand the sentiment – whether he meant he'd be around forever, or he'd never regret her, either, didn't matter; the question itself was soothing.

Leia put her arms around his neck, pulling on his hair gently to get up to face her. She kissed him possessively, twisting her fingers into his hair. She pulled back, and her lips turned up coquettishly. She touched her nose to his, and shook her head.

"No," she said huskily. "I want you to get _Property of Leia Organa_."

He started laughing again, pulling her back against him for another kiss.

"All yours, Princess," he growled seductively, turning and pulling her on top of him. "All yours."

She straddled his hips and leaned down to kiss him, her lips brushing his jaw lightly; for the rest of the night, his hand hardly strayed from the coordinates on her skin.

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 _-alexandra_  
 _story #302_


End file.
